The gate whined shut behind them, a sound of grim finality that severed them from the familiar, ceaseless hum of the enclave. Out here, the only sound was the wind, a thin, abrasive whisper that carried the taste of glass dust and a silence so profound it felt like a pressure against the ears.
This was the Scar.
It wasn't a wasteland. Wastelands were empty. The Scar was full. It was full of the ghosts of what came before, colossal skeletons of long-dead Chimeras arching against the bruised-purple sky like the ribs of forgotten gods. The ground wasn't dirt; it was a crushed, crystallized grit that crunched under their boots with the sound of grinding teeth. Twisted, glassy flora, like petrified coral, grew in jagged clusters, catching the pale sun in a thousand malevolent glints. The world Kael had left behind was a cage of grey ferrocrete; this was a graveyard of impossible beauty.
"Eyes sharp, Scion," Zane's voice crackled over the squad comms, needlessly loud in the oppressive quiet. "Command says this sector's been quiet, but quiet is how you get dead."
Kael kept his thoughts to himself. Quiet wasn't how you got dead; it was just a different kind of monster. He let his senses expand, a technique Jax had drilled into him until it was second nature. He didn't just look; he felt. The Hound's Echo, now a familiar current coiled around his own, gave him a different read on the world. He could feel the faint, dissonant energy signatures of the crystalline plants, the way the wind snagged on the sharp edges of a Chimera's bleached vertebra half-buried in the grit.
Ahead, Zane moved like he owned the place, his Stonetusk Boar Echo a dense, stubborn weight in the Aethel-scape. He didn't walk so much as he crushed the ground beneath his feet, his kinetic spear held in a grip that could dent plasteel. Behind him, Leo scurried, his eyes wide, his own Frame a tight, nervous flicker. He was trying so hard to be a good shield, a solid rock, but his energy felt more like a startled tortoise pulling its head in. Maya was a ghost at the rear, her Glimmer Moth Echo a soft, silvery pulse that seemed to absorb the light. She moved with a practiced silence, but her focus was inward, a stark contrast to Zane's belligerent outward projection.
They were a mess. A boar, a moth, a rock, and a hound. A child's fable gone wrong.
"What's the hold-up, Scuttler?" Zane barked, turning to see Kael paused, his head tilted. "See a shiny rock you wanna take home?"
Kael ignored the jibe. His gaze was fixed on a narrow ravine to their left, a dark slash in the landscape choked with the glassy, coral-like growth. "There," he said, his voice low. "It's a perfect ambush point. The ground is unstable. We should go around."
He could feel it with the Hound's senses—the subtle shift in the air currents, the way the silence in the ravine felt different, heavier. It was the feeling of a predator's den.
Zane scoffed, a burst of static on the comms. "An ambush point for what? We're the baddest thing out here. We go through, not around. That's how you project strength." He jabbed a thumb at his chest. "I'm the leader. We go through. Leo, on me. You two, watch our backs."
It wasn't an order; it was a challenge. A test of dominance. Kael met Maya's gaze for a fleeting second. Her eyes, dark and worried, held a silent apology. There was no arguing with an avalanche.
They hadn't made it ten steps into the ravine when the world erupted.
They didn't burst from the ground or leap from the cliffs. They were just… there. As if the crystalline shards on the ground had suddenly gained legs and a malevolent intelligence. Crystal-Claw Scuttlers. A pack of six. They were low-slung, reptilian things, their bodies a chaotic fusion of razor-sharp quartz and dark, smoky crystal. They moved with a twitching, insectile speed, their claws clicking on the rock with a sound like a dozen knives being sharpened at once.
"Contact!" Leo yelped, a shimmering, concave shell of translucent energy flaring into existence around him and Zane. It was the Iron-Shelled Mollusk, a perfect, passive defense.
Zane roared, a sound of pure, unadulterated rage. "Finally! Time to smash something!"
He charged, a one-man battering ram. He slammed into the first Scuttler, his spear a blunt instrument. The impact was brutal, shattering the Chimera's crystalline hide in a spray of razor-sharp fragments. But his charge was a straight line, a tactic devoid of any subtlety. It left his flanks wide open.
Two more Scuttlers converged on him. Their claws screeched against his combat suit, leaving deep gouges. They were Tier-1, not strong enough to punch through his Frame's innate defense, but they were fast, their attacks a blur of jagged limbs.
"Maya! Flash!" Leo yelled, his voice strained as another Scuttler slammed into his shield, the impact rattling his teeth.
Maya raised her hands, but her movements were hesitant, her confidence shot. A wave of soft light pulsed outwards, but it was unfocused, a diffuse shimmer instead of a blinding flare. It washed over the area, momentarily confusing one of the Scuttlers attacking Zane, but also catching Kael in its periphery, making his vision swim for a critical half-second.
The fight was a disaster of their own making. Zane was a hammer in a room full of nails and broken glass, powerful but reckless. Leo was a fortress with no gate, all defense and no mobility, effectively pinning himself and Zane in a crossfire. Maya's support was too timid to be effective. They weren't a squad; they were three separate, failing strategies.
Another Scuttler, ignored in the chaos, broke off and skittered towards Maya.
Kael didn't wait for an order. He didn't think. He flowed.
He let the Hound's consciousness bleed into his own, not the buried rage, but the pure, cold logic of the hunt. The frantic, messy world of shouts and energy flashes resolved into a clear, predictable matrix. He saw the Scuttler's path. He saw the rhythm of its twitching movements. He saw the brief, half-second interval where it shifted its weight to leap, exposing the softer, less-crystallized joint where its leg met its torso.
He moved. It was the pounce he'd practiced a hundred times in the Forge, a low, ground-eating motion that felt more natural than walking. He wasn't running; he was flowing through the gaps in the chaos. The kinetic spear in his hands no longer felt like a dead weight. It felt like a part of him, a fang.
The Scuttler leaped.
Kael was already there. He didn't slam into it like Zane. He moved with it, his spear thrusting upward in a smooth, economical arc. The tip found the joint, the one he'd seen in his mind's eye a second before.
There was no screech of metal on crystal. Just a clean, sharp crack.
The Scuttler's momentum carried it past him, its leap turned into a dead fall. It hit the ground and dissolved into a cloud of fading light, its Soul Echo a wisp of energy that dissipated into the thin air. The kill was silent, surgical, and terrifyingly efficient.
The sudden loss of one of its own seemed to stun the rest of the pack. Zane seized the moment, his frustration boiling over into a fresh wave of violence, and shattered another Scuttler. The remaining three, their pack-instincts broken, hesitated for a moment before melting back into the crystalline landscape, vanishing as quickly as they had appeared.
Silence returned, thick and heavy. The air smelled of ozone and shattered crystal. Leo dropped his shield, panting, his face pale. Maya was staring at the spot where the Scuttler Kael killed had vanished, her expression a mixture of awe and fear.
They had won. But it felt like another, more personal kind of failure.
Zane stood over the glittering dust of the Chimera he had smashed, his chest heaving. He turned, his gaze sweeping past Leo and Maya, and landed on Kael. He looked at Kael's simple kinetic spear, then at the empty space where the flanked Scuttler had been. His face was a mask of thunderous fury. It wasn't the look of a leader grateful for the save. It was the look of a king whose prized hammer had just been outdone by a scalpel.
"Show-off," Zane spat, the word dripping with a venom that was far more dangerous than any Chimera's claw. The "weak" Echo had worked. And in that moment, Kael knew that in Zane's eyes, that was a far greater crime than disobeying an order.